by Carolyn Burge

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Monthly Archives: January 2016

Change is usually pretty difficult for most people. If you are thinking of trying something new when it comes to lessons in your kids ministry, it’s probably a good idea to help your volunteers process the change. Here are some things I learned along the journey of transitioning my team to a new curriculum.

Do your research. Before you decide to make the change, find out what your volunteers like about your current curriculum, and what is not working. Then research what options could potentially solve some of your challenges, or take your kids ministry to a new level.

Communicate. You can never over communicate. Email short emails. Send volunteers little bits of info at a time. Send them sample videos. Send them a sample lesson. Let them know some of the benefits the new curriculum will bring.

Invite them to a meeting. Invite your key leaders or teachers to come to see and hear about the new curriculum. Have samples printed off, and outline what changes will be taking place.

Take the new Curriculum on a Test Drive. Tell your volunteers that you are going to try something new. They might be more open to a ‘test drive’ than a big change that is set in stone. Try it out for a few months, and then decide if you are going to keep going with the new curriculum.

Ask for Feedback. Ask how things are going. Tweak things along the way that need tweaking. Listen to your volunteers to see if the new curriculum will be helpful or you need to go back to the drawing board.

Preschoolers love to sing! When looking for some new Preschool Worship Videos, I found some from NewSpring Church. They have done a great job of making videos for preschoolers. You can view them for free on YouTube. Here are some of the songs we are doing with the preschoolers at our church.

Here are some ideas that you can use to help your preschoolers participate in worship time:

Have preschoolers stand/sit on a mat. You can buy small size mats (from Target for about $3) that are just big enough for a preschooler to stand on. When it’s time to sing, have them stand on their mat & it helps to define the space where they should stay.

Songs on Video. If you can play videos on a screen it will help take your preschool worship time to a whole new level. However, it’s important to have a person lead the songs from the front while the video is playing, and do not use the video as a replacement for human interaction.

GO BIG. Choose songs that have people doing actions on screen. Then get all the helpers in the room to do the actions too. Big, over-exaggerated actions help kids to participate.

Simple Words. Choose songs that have just a few lines that are repeated over and over.

Repeat the same songs. We do the same 3 songs every week in our preschool room. The kids will learn the songs and be able to participate easier if you keep the selection to just a handful of songs.

I was looking for some new Kids Worship Songs and came across some new videos by Summit Creative Company. There are several things I like about these videos:

Contemporary Sound. I’m not sure what is ‘contemporary’ these days, but these songs have a sound to them that is current with pop culture. Kids like these songs because the style is familiar to them.

Lyrics on the screen. Short, simple phrases on each frame are easy to follow. Even if the kids can’t read yet, the lyrics help the volunteers in the room sing the songs.

Motions on the screen. My biggest challenge when doing songs with kids? The leaders forget the motions. Sometimes volunteers do different motions from week to week, or the motions vary from volunteer to volunteer. Having the motions on screen helps to keep the motions consistent.

Visual Effects. They use several different effects throughout their videos to keep kids attention.

Great words. Most of their songs really focus on God. When kids are in our program, we have limited time, so I really want to make sure that the lyrics we sing focus on how amazing our God is.